The Dreams of Mrs Joe Gargery
by Atana
Summary: Orlick's brutal attack has reduced Pip's sister to a brain-damaged invalid. What does she see and experience while in one of her "bad states"? A Great Expectations backstory. N.B. I love the works of Charles Dickens, but don't think he liked women very much. Especially the pushy ones.
1. Chapter 1

**THE DREAMS OF MRS. JOE GARGERY**

 _ **by Atana**_

 **1\. SILENCE**

 **It had been nearly a year since the attack on Mrs. Joe Gargery, and Biddy Wopsle now found herself sitting in the best parlor across from Cooling's elderly head constable. Her smooth dark blonde hair was pulled back in a bun; her hands twisted a handkerchief endlessly, running the lace through her fingers.**

 **"We have had precious little luck in identifying the culprit," Jeremiah Pankhurst declared, noting the young woman's obvious case of nerves and resolving to speak gently with her. "Before we close things up, I wondered if you would spend a few minutes with me."**

 **Biddy nodded. She could hear Orlick, Joe, and Pip at work in the forge, and it calmed her.**

" **I asked Mr. Gargery if I might speak to Mrs. Gargery, and he said no," Pankhurst said.**

 **Biddy nodded in agreement. "She is afraid of strangers," she said. "Especially men."**

" **You've been Mrs. Gargery's caretaker for a while now," Pankhurst said. "What I want to know is if she's said anything – anything at all – that would give us any indication if she remembers the attack." He glanced at the seated woman through the parlor door and noticed Pip's old slate on the table next to her. "Has she written anything down?"**

 **Biddy sighed. "She doesn't speak at all, sir," she said. "and as far as writing, she only went to school for a couple of months so she writes precious little. Mr. Gargery told me that her father – Pip's and her father, you know – didn't believe in sending girls to school. He considered it a royal waste of time."**

 **The old constable nodded. "I remember Philip Pirrip indeed," he murmured. "Not the best of fathers to be sure."**

 **xxxxxxxxxxx**

 _ **Years ago Pankhurst had been a young man new to the force who had been in this very kitchen before, but on another case. It seemed that the blacksmith had soundly beaten his wife for taking in a young girl who had tried to drown herself in the marsh water. Her son Joe had seen the girl running down the lane, sobbing as if her heart would break, and had followed her. He had lost her for a while but then spotted her sinking into the muck, and had raced over and pulled her by the hair from the gray-green water and pounded what water he could out of her lungs before carrying her home.**_

 _ **After Pankhurst had examined Mrs. Gargery's black eye and his son's fresh bruises, he had gone out to the forge and determined that Enoch Gargery had not only been drunk as a goat but also in the simmer-down phase of a fit of rage. After that, he had spoken to young Joe about the girl.**_

" _ **Workin her to death is what they are doing, sir," the boy had said. "And beatin her when they wasn't workin her. Said her name was Georgie and that her father dug graves an suchlike at the church. Ma got her bout settled but once my pa come in here, she took one look at him and took off out the front door. Then he lit into my Ma." He rubbed his blue eyes with a grimy soot-spotted fist. "That's all I know, except I don't want that girl drowning herself again if I can help it." He wrapped his arms around his weeping mother.**_

 _ **After Gargery had been taken to gaol to sleep it off, Pankhurst had gone to the Pirrip home to make inquiries there. The young girl stood by the fire stirring a pot of stew; her pregnant mother sat nearby fanning herself. He noticed that the girl's hair was still wet from the marsh water, and it was hanging in such a way as to obscure her face, which was fortunate for her father since he had beaten her soundly upon her return from her little marsh adventure.**_

" _ **Warn't my daughter," Pirrip had said. "She been here all day long. Now if you will excuse us, my wife is in a fix and I don't want her eating supper late."**_

 _ **The young man had shook his head at the time, consigning the scene to memory.**_

 **xxxxxxxxxxx**

 **Over the following years he had kept an eye on that household and concluded that the Pirrip parents kept the girl as their slavey, which bothered them not a whit because they had wanted sons, not daughters. Predictably, the girl grew up sad and mean and hardly left the house for parties, or dances, or carol-singing or anything else that young people enjoyed. Since her mother was always either in a "delicate state" or mourning the death of yet another baby, all of the work of the house had fallen onto her shoulders and this had been the way it had been in the Pirrip home since time out of mind.**

 **Diptheria had attacked the Pirrip household and had sickened the parents and daughter. Georgie Pirrip had been the only one to survive it, a fact she regretted once she figured out there was no one to raise her parents' new baby but her.**

 **The father's gambling debts had finally caught up with him posthumously and a judgment of execution had been served on the front door of the little house. Horrified but being too poor to stop it, Georgiana Pirrip and her brother had moved to the back stable after the home's new residents had taken up establishment. What she would do when the cold weather arrived, she was sure she didn't know.**

 **It had been just more bad luck for the Pirrip girl. And now she sat in the next room, as well nigh dead as a person could be, and Pankhurst felt bad that there had been nothing he could have done for her back then.**

 **But what could he have done, at any rate? Under English law it was no crime for a man to beat his wife and children, particularly if they were as ill-tempered and contrary as young Georgie Pirrip.**

 **xxxxxxxxxxx**

 **The constable coughed in his fist, and Biddy jumped. "You are aware that at the time of the assault we closely examined Mr. Gargery and determined that he was not a suspect at that time. Have you seen or heard anything that might indicate that I am wrong in that respect?"**

 **The young girl's jaw dropped, and tears welled in her eyes. "Oh, sir! Mr. Gargery could never hurt her. Did you notice a few minutes ago, how he come wandering in here and looked at the old Dutch clock above the fire? He doesn't know what to do with himself without her tellin him. You know," Biddy continued, placing her hands on her knees and leaning forward, "I don't think Mr. Gargery can tell time by the clock. I think she always did that for him – Mrs. Joe, I mean. Once I figured it out, I've started to tell him myself; such as, Mr. Gargery, it's time for tea, or it's time for a drink of water and a rest, or it's time to close up shop and come in for supper." She wiped tears from her face and sighed deeply. "He's like a ship without a port. He goes in there for hours and talks to her, even though she can't understand him or talk back even if she could. It's like he is imagining things are the way they used to be." She shook her head again. "No, sir. No. Mr. Gargery wouldn't harm her. Not ever. I know that as well as I know my own name."**

 **Pankhurst did not respond immediately, and Biddy mistook his silence as reticence.**

" **You need to understand this, sir, and understand it well. Mr. Gargery don't know what to do without her," she replied simply. "Why would he kill the person who kept him going, after all?"**


	2. Chapter 2: Meeting

**2\. MEETING**

 **The same diptheria epidemic which had taken the Pirrip parents had also taken Joe Gargery's mother. His miserable and drunken father had died several months earlier, much to the unspoken relief of both his widow and his son.**

 **Now, Joe hadn't ever been the brightest or the most clever of boys in the village, and considering that his father had knocked him in the head enough times to literally scramble his brains, he did know enough to go into the forge at sunrise and work until sunset. Mum had taken care of arranging the rest; letting him know that the next day was the Sabbath or that taxes were due Tuesday next or that he should call on that nice Molly McCutchin next week if he had a mind.**

 **After he had buried his mother in the St. James' Church graveyard, he had gone back to the forge and had sat alone night after night, dirty dishes piling up and the laundry lying in sooty undone piles. He knew how to pound out a fireplace poker or shoe a horse, but the rest of it was as foreign to him as speaking Urdu. There were at least a dozen young ladies in the village who would have welcomed the young blacksmith's attentions and yearned to ease his sadness, but he was too aggrieved to care.**

 **One day his Uncle Pumblechook had come by for tea and had looked around the dingy kitchen. "I have a girl working for me for an hour or two a day, cleaning house and such. An orphan girl with a baby brother to raise, you see. Cheap enough. She's too grateful for the work to demand more wages than I give her. She does piecework and such; otherwise she'd be in the workhouse along with the infant. Shall I send her over to put this place to rights? Your poor mother would be horrified to see it such, Joseph."**

 **Joe had nodded, and that had been that.**

 **Georgiana Maria Pirrip and her tiny brother Philip had arrived at the forge two days later in the midst of a three-day rainstorm. Not realizing who she was, Joe had looked around for her carriage or shay-cart or horse and saw none. Then, his eye had fallen on the small wicker basket she carried and he saw a tiny kicking foot under a rain-soaked blanket. Without a word he had reached out for the shivering girl, pulling her by the shoulders and leading her close to the forge fire.**

" **You're soaked to your soul," he had said, fanning the fire so it would begin to warm her, and she had looked into his handsome and kindly face. "Do you remember who I am?" she whispered. "I used to run away from home at least a dozen times a month and hide out in the marshes, not too far from here. You and your Ma even let me come in here once. I was so happy."**

 **When Joe studied her face, the shock of recognition came upon him and he threw his arms around her. The girl, being desperate and lonely and skin-starved, was more than happy to return his warm embrace.**

 **xxxxxxxxxx**

 **It came as a surprise to neither of them that over the following days the young blacksmith came to believe that it was his duty to God, country, and himself to help and care for the two Pirrip orphans. This ultimately proved to be both blessing and curse. However, when a young man is twenty-five and the sap is flowing and he finds himself desperate for female company, such details are scarcely to be looked for.**

 **Within a day or two the Gargery** **kitchen was clean and neat as a pin, with his laundry done and an apple pie cooling on** **the windowsill. Several more weeks passed and the upstairs bedrooms were cleaned and their floors scrubbed to perfection. Young Dolge Orlick, who served Joe as apprentice in the smithy, then made the suggestion to him at the Three** **Jolly Bargemen** **one night that the girl was an ugly** **harpy and his master would best be** **served by kicking her and that squalling brat out of the forge at once. Joe had then most sincerely recommended to Orlick that he shut his head or become a man without employment and without the chance of any.**

 **Georgie Pirrip wasn't ugly, after all, at least not in Joe's eyes. Her dark eyes were haunting and her long black hair curled smoothly around her thin face, giving her a winsome look. Anyone would be thin and bony for want of food. Joe had insisted that every time she cooked a meal that she share it with him. It made his heart** **hurt to see her hands shake as she ate, knowing how starved for both food and common human kindness she obviously was.**

 **Realization of life's realities was not one of Joe's strong points, but spending company with this poor young woman made him realize how empty his own heart had been. One thing led to another as it often does and on the night he had kissed her in his kitchen over their empty dinner plates while the baby lay asleep, she had said many things to him and none of them had been no.**

 **xxxxxxxxxxx**

 **Joe had been elated to realize that he was no longer lost and lorn and that his days of coming in from the forge and sitting in an empty kitchen were over.**

 **The Pirrip girl's unschooled intelligence had been a welcome surprise. She knew a great many things of use in his trade – she suggested that on his days off he place a sign saying as much on the closed forge door so that people wouldn't be vexed, and even drew it for him. "HOUT" it said, and he had never seen anything quite as sensible in his life. Even though she had learned no ciphering, Georgie Pirrip had quickly learned to keep track of his income and expenses mostly by using a series of small boxes on top of the mantle and by counting her fingers. She thought up ways he could increase his business and kept track of his days, his weeks, and his months and all the events and holidays contained therein. Joe was quite correct in his belief that she was the most astonishing girl he had ever met.**

 **As many people are fond of saying, however, good often comes with bad and Joe Gargery** **was far from blind to his strange girl's fits of temper. They had told each other their childhood stories early on. However, unlike Joe, Georgiana could not shake off her demons. Suspicion and distrust colored all her interactions with her fellow-humans. Waves of panic overcame her. Sometimes, she** **would cry for days. Joe did his best to cheer her but soon realized that she was beyond his fixing. And when it came to her striking out against him in a fit of temper, well, that was something Joe had already been used to and it didn't trouble him much.**

 **Their engagement and marriage wasn't far in coming, and of course baby Philip was more than welcome beside the kitchen fire. They both longed to add a baby to their little family to keep him company. Tiny Annie Gargery had been born one December day when the marshes had been frozen over and the sky had been a leaden grey, but she did not linger long as she had come a great deal too early. After living only three weeks, she departed this world to join her uncles, leaving her parents dumbstruck with grief and her mother a bloody tattered mess after her hard birth, and there were no more children after that.**

 **That is when the household rampages began in earnest and when Joe began to fear for his wife's mental state. In his simple way, he had reasoned that she had seen too much death and dying and Annie's death had been more than she could bear. All of this was scarce comfort to either Joe or Pip when she made their lives miserable.** **Pip, of course, remembered nothing about the other little child at the Forge as he had been just a baby himself.**

 **xxxxxxxxxxx**

 **All of this had happened long ago. And now, it pained Joe to know what many in the village now said about his wife – that she had been such an insufferable shrew that she had it coming.**

 **That was outrageous, of course. Nobody had deserved what had happened to her. Joe hadn't even seen her lying on the floor until he had left his own boot track in her congealed blood. He had turned and thrown open the kitchen door and vomited rum all over the front steps. Then, of course, he had begun screaming.**

 **xxxxxxxxxxx**

" **So you see, sir," Biddy concluded, standing up and smoothing her apron. "I wish I had something to tell you, but I don't believe she remembers what happened to her at all. And please remember, sir, that Mr. Gargery couldn't have been the one to hurt her because she was the one who kep him going." She looked over at Mrs. Joe, silent and slumped over in her chair. "The doctor says we need to put irons on her back and limbs soon or she'll curl up like a newborn babe. I don't think she'd like irons on her limbs, do you?" Biddy sighed.**

 **Constable Pankhurst shook his head and thanked her for her time.**

 **As he was leaving, he ran into Joe Gargery who was just then approaching to have another look at the old Dutch clock he couldn't read. Pankhurst looked into the man's distracted face and saw the uncertainty and sadness in his eyes.**

" **Good evening, Mr. Gargery," the policeman said, stepping outside.**

" **Tea in about half an hour, Mr. Gargery," Biddy told him.**


	3. Chapter 3: Shattered

**3\. SHATTERED**

 **If the sad creature slumped in the padded chair in the corner alcove had been able to hear her, Mrs. Joe would have nodded in agreement with Biddy's conclusion. Joe had ample opportunities to throttle her dead throughout their years together and hadn't; the mere thought of it had horrified him. He had known she had been broken from the very start and took her into his life anyway, and his forge and house was the only place Georgiana Pirrip Gargery had ever felt safe and powerful in her life.**

 **There had been no one to slap or punch her there, or label her worthless. Her tongue was sharp and her manner insulting there because she knew no other way to be. Her own parents had raised her with kicks and blows, after all. Joe understood this, even though Pip did not.**

 **Biddy had been right. Mrs. Joe had been the keeper of the Order of Things in the blacksmith's life and he knew it. Now, however, she was silent and as useless to Joe Gargery as she had once been useful. She had been stuck into this little alcove off the best parlor so that she couldn't see the motion of her husband as he went in and out of their kitchen during the course of a day. If she saw him, she would begin her terrible keening for him and even at six feet four inches in height the burly blacksmith would burst into tears and go to her, leaving the work in the forge undone for hours at a time. Early on and before Biddy came to help, this had precipitated a small financial crisis in the family.**

 **Pip had decided that it was easier to put his sister in the alcove and convinced Joe that it really would be for the best. Unfortunately she had yet another stroke the very next day and fell out of her padded chair, and neither Joe nor Pip saw her lying on the floor until before dinnertime. She had broken her nose and bled all over the floor and herself; Joe was of no help as he immediately lapsed into blind panic. "It's as she were when I found her, old chap!" he had cried over and over until Pip felt as if he would go mad himself. After the doctor left Pip took a stout piece of cord and tied it round his sister's** **waist and through the slats of the chair's high back. It would have to do until he and Joe figured out another plan. Biddy had shown up a week later and had removed the cord, threatening Pip with strangulation with it. Both agreed that it would be best not to tell Joe, who was rapidly becoming as big a wreck as his wife.**

 **xxxxxxxxxx**

 **Mrs. Joe had been happy to see Biddy but had lost nearly all her words. The only ones she remembered through the tangled mess inside her head were as simple and primitive as herself these days –** ** _cold – hot – hungry – thirsty._** **All she had left were snatches of memory and impressions that looked to her mind like pictures in a book.**

 **However, she remembered the last four words spoken to her by Dolge Orlick before he killed her life:** ** _Now – you're – a'gonna – pay._** **And she had paid, and dearly. He had cracked her skull open and shattered her spine with his heavy and relentless blacksmith blows. She had no more feeling below her ribcage than a feedbag stuffed with straw.**

 **She stared across the room, squinting due to her blurred vision; trying to make out the tiles she had scrubbed so endlessly, picturing glimmers of herself as she used to be – frantic and driven, her nameless desperation and bottomless chasm of anger fueling her need** **to scrub and re-scrub the same floor over and over and over again; the same harsh words from her father looping endlessly through her head:** ** _it's not clean enough you can't do anything right finish that soup and get it to your poor ailing mother useless girl you should have died instead of the boys_**

 **She moaned; this unwanted vision of her father had appeared as suddenly amidst her shattered memories as a weed in a field of daisies. Biddy thought it was another headache and jumped up, snatching up the bottle of laudanum and a spoon in case her charge needed it.**

 **Biddy was kind and remembered her before she had become this silent wraith; back when she had been queen of this very kitchen. Mrs. Joe had once given Biddy four freshly-baked rolls wrapped in a clean tea towel when she and Pip had once come back to the forge after a lesson at the old dame-school years ago. Biddy had looked into her black eyes then and had known her as a woman of substance even amidst her poor kitchen and in her tattered clothing, long before she lost her speech and her hearing and her mind.**

 _ **You knew me when I could cook and sew and put everything here to rights**_

 **Mrs. Joe brushed away the spoon, indicating to Biddy that she didn't want the laudanum. It gave her terrible dreams, but she could not tell Biddy that. Instead, she made a writing gesture and Biddy handed her Pip's old chalk and slate. She once again wrote the "T" shape that signified Orlick. Within a few minutes, he entered the kitchen – his eyes darting around the room as if to ensure that the policeman had in fact gone – and looked at the woman in the chair, careful to wipe every vestige of emotion from his face. Biddy handed him a glass of apple cider, the last Mrs. Joe had made before she had forgotten how.**

 **Mrs. Joe smiled as he drank. With this gesture, she believed herself safe for one more day. She knew it was Orlick who had destroyed her, and retained just enough self-preservation to pretend that she hadn't remembered.**

 **It would be all to easy for Dolge Orlick to slip into the kitchen through the forge door when Joe, Pip and Biddy were outside or distracted or upstairs or wherever their destinies took them during that moment. He could have slipped the pillow from under her poor smashed and addled head and pushed it over her face with his huge hand and finished the job he had started all those months ago.**

 _ **Oh she's gone off at last poor thing finally her suffering is over sometimes death is a blessing for those caught in a trap so unfortunate for the blacksmith that she had to linger so**_

 **Mrs. Joe was not what she used to be, but she did not want to die. At least not yet. Sometimes – during her bad spells – she fancied herself taken away where she spent time in a large meadow with her five dead brothers – all of them dressed in white and in the form of young men – where they had asked her what had taken their big sister so long to join them.**

 **She had asked them, during one of these sojourns, where their parents were; Tobias just smirked and shook his head. Were they in Hell? They wouldn't answer but urged her to frolic a while with them. She found that she could dance and move around in this place; the body she saw when she looked down at herself was well and whole. Was this Heaven? Wherever she was, it was a sight better than lying in a kitchen on the marshland outside of Cooling with no more sense than the bucket of metal slag which sat in the forge corner.**

 **Her dead brothers** **had wound their arms around her, but each time she had pulled away. The thought of Joe Gargery pulled her soul back to the forge and back into the broken body in the cushioned chair. Right after she had been so gravely injured, he had lain across her weeping, pleading with her not to leave him. The Pirrip brothers were gentle and kind but Joe was kinder; he had been the only man she had ever known who had thought she was lovely and brilliant** **when she had been neither.**

 **She could only sleep when she heard his heartbeat; stuck alone in this alcove off the kitchen she was even more separated from him. At the times when her inarticulate loneliness was most acute and the tears rolled down her thin face, neither Biddy nor Pip nor Joe could learn from her what the trouble was. It had been the doctor who had been responsible for that state of affairs, telling Joe Gargery** **that her bones had grown so brittle that even a hug could collapse her ribcage.**

 **He had been the only man who had understood her and accepted her rage and hurt and isolation but loved her anyway, and now she was apart from him forever.** **Mrs. Joe sat in her alcove and wept, destined never again to hear the beating of her husband's heart against her face. She missed him desperately but had lost the words to tell him.**


	4. Chapter 4: Gone Away

**4\. GONE AWAY**

 **Every once in a while Georgiana Gargery drifted off to whatever dreams there were, and sometimes past events in her own life paraded themselves across the insides of her eyelids. To the conscious outside world, she appeared to be asleep or near death, and perhaps she was either or both. During those occasions her family members would fret as to whether she might die of thirst or hunger or whether she would wake up at all. It was all the same to her.**

 **One evening at seven o'clock (which was of no significance to Mrs. Joe since she could no longer see the old Dutch clock) she recalled the face of a man who once held sway over the whole village of Cooling, including the small church where her father had been the sexton. His name was Judge William Tamhurst Colquhoun and he had been great friends with many of the families of the village, particularly those with young girls.**

 **One day when Georgie Pirrip had been around nine years old, Judge Colquhoun had come around their tatty little house with a great basket of flour and buckwheat and several rashers of bacon and the Pirrip parents had fallen over themselves in hospitality and warm welcome. Of course, after the pretense of a meal had been prepared and eaten, the Judge's attention fell upon Georgie, who knew a rotter when she saw one and as a consequence had wedged herself in between the cupboard and the kitchen fireplace. He explained to her parents that he enjoyed the company of children and that their daughter might like to learn some fairy tales and dream stories.**

 **Of course, they agreed at once, and that Thursday next Judge Colquhoun came by in a shay-cart for the girl. They weren't dream stories** **that he shared with her that day, but other things that gave her nightmares instead.**

 **xxxxxxxxxx**

 **When she told her mother and pleaded not to go with him again, her father had slapped her face, calling her the greatest liar in three counties. Georgie Pirrip had then run outside, scooped a brick out of the garden enclosure, and smashed the front parlor windows one by one until her father grabbed her by the hair and proceeded to beat her within an inch of her life.**

 **The pattern continued for several months. She had no friends and her parents had already branded her the worst of liars, one who would slander the reputation of one of the finest jurists in the Town of Rochester. She was nearly out of her mind with fear and dread. After a while she contemplated suicide, which was a shame since she was not yet ten years old. This was when she had made her dash for the marshes and had tried to drown herself.**

 **The next time the Judge came to pay his respects with more baskets of dainties and sweetmeats and to take Georgie for another outing, she went without complaint but with a** **pocket-knife stolen from her father stuffed deep in her apron pocket. When the old man cornered her in his own back parlor, she had cut him with it across his wide and ponderous belly; not enough to seriously damage but enough to hurt. She had fled his house and had run out to the marshes where she had hidden for hours, looking at the distant forge-fire and wishing that the young man who lived there would come and find her and hide her away forever.**

 **She squatted shivering on the wet ground, her shoes and socks saturated with the slimy water. She was afraid of the police and home but she was more afraid of knocking on the forge door and having the young man's father hit her a lick with his hammer and drive her away.**

 **The young man (who of course had been Joe Gargery) hadn't come out to rescue the traumatized girl only because he hadn't known she was there. He had problems of his own at home, trying to keep his mother's body and soul together in spite of his father's constant abuse.**

 **As it happened, the police never came knocking at the Pirrip door because Judge Colquhoun had failed to report the assault, choosing instead to tell his wife that he had scraped himself on a wire fence when a lively set of horses attached to a shay-cart ran him off the county road. Georgie's mother, however, had hided her for ruining her best (and only) pair of shoes.**

 **xxxxxxxxxx**

 **When Georgie Pirrip became acquainted once again with Joe Gargery some years later and it had turned quite serious in a hurry, her fear of desertion and rejection had sealed her lips tight. She hadn't told Joe about the awful judge with his fairy stories. One night about three weeks into their intimate association, however, she had felt so warm and safe with the blacksmith that she had taken a chance and whispered the story in his ear. She then squeezed her eyes shut, ready for the impact of the young man's foot against her belly, shoving her backward out of his bed and onto the cold floor.**

 **Instead of a shove, Georgie was met with silence as Joe Gargery thought it through. She felt his arms tighten around her, nearly enough to hurt. She could see his shoulder muscles tensing in the moonlight. Her heart was in her throat as her feelings swung betwixt relief and terror. If he killed her for tricking him, she more than likely deserved it. On the other hand, he knew what it was like when the people who were charged with loving you hated you instead through no fault of your own.**

" **Is 'e alive or dead?" Joe asked evenly.**

" **Died two years ago last March," she had replied, her tears flowing onto his neck.**

 **Joe said nothing for another minute.**

" **Saves me killin' im, then,** **"** **he murmured.**

 **xxxxxxxxxx**

 **The next day the pair took the baby in his basket for a walk to the village churchyard, where Georgie Pirrip looked and looked until she found the elaborate granite marker designating the final resting place of the Honorable** **William Tamhurst Colquhoun. This had been a chore indeed since she could scarcely read and Joe couldn't read at all. Joe sauntered over at her call and carefully placed baby Philip in his basket well to the right of the grave. And then, he unbuttoned his trousers and released a flood of morning pump-water and tea onto it.**

 **Georgie doubled over with laughter, but was snapped out of her jubilation by a woman's cry coming from her right.**

 **"What are you doing to my father's grave?" the voice demanded.**

 **Without hesitation (and while Joe made himself decent once again) she strode over to the woman with tears of rage beginning to spurt from her flinty eyes. "That old bastard trifled with me when I was but a child," she hissed, "and my Joe is doing for me what I couldn't do then. What of it?"**

 **The woman stopped dead in her tracks, and her jaw dropped almost comically. "Oh my God," she said. "Oh dear God, he did that to you as well?" The gently-bred lady promptly burst into tears and the two women embraced.**

 **Joe looked up to see her husband making his way to the grave site. "I know you're related to this 'ere bastard," Joe said, "an' I'm but sorry for it, but he hurt my girl and I won't 'ave it."**

 **The husband (the owner of a tailor shop in the next town but one) sighed and dropped his head. "Mine as well. Glad you did it. Frankly, I would prefer to dig him up and leave him for the town dogs to rip up and drag** **away."**

 **Both men looked up at the two women, who were clutching one another's shoulders and talking at the same time. After a while, Georgie looked up. "Abigail and me are comin here tonight, along with three others he trifled with. See to it, Joe, that no one interferes with** **us."**

 **Joe contemplated the hard glitter in her black eyes and rubbed his side-whisker. He nodded. "Constable and sexton won't bother you. I'll ask em to a revel at the Bargemen at no cost to them. You too, friend," Joe continued, slapping the** **husband on the back. "Sounds like a good night for the two o' us to stay away from the wimmen and get drunker than thieves, eh?"**

 **xxxxxxxxxx**

 **Long after closing time, Joe walked back** **to the forge, weaving side-to-side all the while, after spending the evening with the aforementioned group of men at the Three Jolly Bargemen. It was a fine bright spring night and the full moon cast his unsteady shadow on the dirt road. Beyond him stretched the marshes, the stars barely visible above them.**

 **He sat on the stairs and had a smoke of his pipe. He could hear shrieks and cries coming from the distant churchyard; it made him shiver as the women doing the screaming sounded rageful enough to reach inside any man, rip out his innards, and shatter him to pieces forever.**

 **The minister's daughter Mary Anne Robinson was there, plunging her kitchen knife into the dirt above Judge Colquhoun's mortal remains. Her husband had divorced her when she had finally told him. Eliza Brome, who worked as a domestic in Cooling because she felt no man would have her in marriage, squatted on the ground as she rocked back and forth, weeping. Jane Bird Ormsby, now widowed from a lovely man who had known and understood, chanted an endless stream of curses under her breath, and this she did for all the women desecrating the grave site and all those still unknown to them who had fallen victim to the buried jurist. The child of a solicitor's clerk named Sarah Gooding struck the fine engraving on his tombstone again and again with her husband's hammer; thanks to the good judge's predations** **they had never been able to enjoy a family of their own. Georgiana Maria** **Pirrip and Abigail Colquhoun Kenzies rocked the headstone** **back and forth, determined to topple it.**

 **These women were transformed with rage and would have done far worse if they hadn't all been ladies in good standing at St. James' Church. That edifice loomed above them, its steeple a warning finger. Church of England or not, however, the female ancestors of these five women** **who had been alive when Alfred the Great had signed the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum would have understood their actions,** **and would probably have joined them.**

 **xxxxxxxxxx**

 **Around two in the morning (little Philip had spent the night at Fanny Hubble's house) Georgiana Pirrip came into view walking** **barefoot down the marsh road, her black hair down to her waist and her clothes filthy. She carried her bonnet and her two very worn slippers in her hands.**

 **"Get me that slipper bath, Joe, and put the kettle on," she whispered to him.**

 **Nearly dropping his clay pipe, Joe spent the next twenty minutes heating water and pouring it into the lozenge-shaped tin receptacle standing in the middle of the kitchen.**

 **Georgiana** **shucked her clothes and slid under the water. Tendrils of black hair rose to the top, curving with the small currents which eddied through the water. There was no further movement.**

 **For a moment Joe (who had drunk far too much rum than was good for him) became terrified that she was intent on drowning herself, and reached over to scoop her up and out of the steaming water. Instead, she shot head and shoulders** **out of it with a wail** **and sat there with her wet hair clinging to her face and shoulders, sobbing** **out the last of her grief and pain.**

 **She sat weeping in the slipper-bath until the water went cold and until Joe wrapped her in a towel and sat her on his lap and dried her hair. Then the two of them went upstairs to the bedroom that had belonged to Joe's parents, where Joe had held Georgie until her shivering stopped.**

 **He waited a long while for her to tell him what happened. Instead, all she said was, "The moon was bright enough for the wild work we had to do. Did you see that moon, Joe?"**

 **There was no further mention of Judge Colquhoun among the five women or their respective families. There was no public inquiry into the grave desecration and when the current sexton of St. James' Church asked Abigail Kenzies if she wanted to repair or replace her father's tombstone, she told him she would rather take the money and throw it into the River Medway directly.**

 **xxxxxxxxxx**

 **Funny, how Mrs. Joe could recall such a terrible series of events without pain or fear. Her eyes finally opened and there was Biddy, ready to run a warm wash cloth over her face and to start dribbling cold water into her mouth.**

 **"You were away from us for so long," the young woman whispered. "And where did you go?"**

 **Mrs. Joe blinked. She had been off tipping a child molester's tombstone under the spring moon of many years ago, and then she had gone home where her Joe had asked her when she wanted to put their names down at the church and then had** **held her tight all night long.**

 **But of course, she could not say a word.**


	5. Chapter 5: The Cow

5\. THE COW

 _(N.B. Thanks to Mathieu Salz for his original character Hester the Butcher)_

Cakes were scarce commodities in the Gargery home and were generally reserved for birthdays; it must have been the cake that Biddy had served yesterday that caused Mrs. Joe to remember glimmers and bits about how her life used to be at the forge.

She couldn't have told you if it had been her own birthday yesterday, or Joe's, or Biddy's. Today she was unable to remember her own name, but such is life when one's skull has been shattered like the shell of a hard-boiled egg crackled across a table-top.

xxxxxxxxxx

When Mrs. Joe ruled the proverbial roost flour was dear, and if it had been a hard winter your last hen might have been eaten one dark and hungry night rather than left to survive as a producer of your daily eggs. While Joe was the only blacksmith in the village and did a good business, he barely managed to afford decent food for the three of them. It had been lucky for Joe that his wife had been a good economizer. She considered the organization of the home and the things therein as her stock in trade, and thanks to her native brilliance she was quite good at it.

She owned two pair of shoes; one ragged and one good-for-church. Occasionally, she cut off the heels of a discarded pair of Joe's bluchers and slopped around the house in them. When a family member's shoes wore out, Mrs. Joe would patch the sole with scraps of forge-leather, giving it a good enough whip stitch to last another four or five months before all hope was lost. After all, going to the cobbler was too dear to contemplate.

Her coarse apron had been carefully pieced together from still more scraps from Joe's leather forge coveralls. Portions would be scorched or burned over time and after a while they contained more holes than unworn parts, and that is when Georgiana would salvage the coveralls to add to her coarse apron. It could get hot over the kitchen fire and it was best to keep the frilly bits of your dress from the flames. Of course, numerous scraps allowed for numerous little pockets, allowing her apron to hold a good number of pins and needles. She had even added pockets for her scissors and keys. She considered adding a loop for Tickler, but decided against it, a decision no doubt appreciated by her brother Pip.

Mrs. Joe herself owned three dresses in addition to her well-worn black mourning gown: one was good-for-church; another was good-for-town, and the third was the nondescript calico she wore on most days when she barely left the forge property. This garment had been pieced together from some older dresses owned by Annie Pumblechook Gargery, Joe's late mother (Georgiana had to sell her own mother's clothes for milk for the baby).

Her accessories, such as the pattens she wore during snowstorms or downpours, had been acquired through barter with other town women. The few pieces of jewelry she owned had been hidden deep under the mattress by Joe's mother in her successful attempt to keep her husband from pawning them for drink. Her own mother's jewelry had been sold long ago to buy food for herself and baby Pip back before Joe Gargery had opened his home and heart to them.

On cold days, Mrs. Joe supplemented her normal ensemble with the sleeves of Joe's old worn-out sweaters (occasionally she crocheted the two arms together lengthwise to make warmers of sorts for her long and always cold legs) along with a short shawl for over her shoulders; a long shawl would probably lead to disaster if its swinging fringe stayed too long over the coals of the kitchen fire. Her hair was long and heavy and blue-black and quite lovely to look upon, but if she hadn't wound it up into a bun every day of her life she would have been immolated at her kitchen fire like an archaic Hindu widow.

xxxxxxxxxx

The one thing she was no good at all at conserving was crockery, because it made a most satisfying weapon when shied at Joe or Pip. It also made a lovely crash when it hit the wall or floor. The only problem is that once she had broken her dishes there were no more, at least until she was able to beg or borrow more from the other village ladies.

It was a Cooling tradition to put an unused dish or cup aside for the blacksmith's wife as she was bound to need one sooner or later. Surprisingly, very few of the village women held Mrs. Joe in scorn for her behavior. More than one country wife had suppressed the desire to kick an errant husband up the backside and to know a woman who actually did such things was really rather exciting. They often dropped by the forge just to socialize, bringing their donated pieces of crockery as a tribute of sorts while Mrs. Joe served them tea and bread with butter on mismatched plates.

Now, that is not to say that there were women who thought Mrs. Joe made a mockery of traditional marriage, turning the roles of husband and wife topsy-turvy, but the blacksmith's wife considered females of that ilk "snooty and turned-up nosy." Of course, their husbands thought Mrs. Joe was a disgrace and her husband was errant in his duty to correct her, but as many of them were unfamiliar with her upbringing, Joe paid them no mind.

xxxxxxxxxxx

Every once in a while, Mrs. Joe would make pies which she would sell or barter for things she couldn't make herself. In such cases, she could justify spending money for flour as it would turn itself into ready money soon enough. One of her major worries in life was running out of food; she had gone hungry often as a girl and every time Joe would come down with the ague or a congestion of the lungs, she would panic.

"Don't you worry Georgie dear," he would say. "There's enough ironwork on the premises to feed you for a year if I should bust a leg or go missing havin misstepped in the marshes."

She worried because she was a poor woman who had known enough deprivation to take life's back-falls more seriously than most. Joe and Pip (at least after his apprenticeship) got the lion's share of food as they were doing the physical labor that earned the money, leaving her little. Being chronically malnourished since girlhood, she rarely felt well. Even though she was still young, her back ached and her fingers had trouble wielding her scissors when the morning was cold.

Pip, on the other hand, had never really gone full-on hungry. There had always been an apple or a bread heel for him if dinner wasn't ready. Consequently, he had been chafed and vexed by his sister's constant discussions with Joe's Uncle Pumblechook about money. While he believed that she was nothing more than avaricious, she was actually trying her best to ensure that Pip didn't end up wearing someone else's discarded shoes.

Generally, Pip had no interest in his sister's life, why she was the way she was, or why she did the things she did. She discouraged his questions not because of cruelty but because she was afraid of showing her own appalling lack of schooling. She used corporal punishment on him because that was what her parents used on her, except instead of a wicker cane they had used boards, frying pans, or whatever other implements of torture were handy at the time. Pip's dislike of her, merited or not, effectively blocked their ever becoming friends. He never knew (as Joe had kept his own counsel as well) that his parents had been so cruel and unfeeling toward her, although they would have showered a son with only the very best they could provide. The death of the Pirrip parents had been a curse to their son, but a blessing to their daughter.

Since there were no more Pirrips to deal with, Georgiana had been more than happy to please Joe's only uncle. Pumblechook was amiable and came by frequently, having no immediate family of his own, but made little contribution to the Gargerys' well-being even though he was wealthy and could have "done something" for them other than coming over to eat their food and drink their wine. With the exception of recognized holidays (for which she had scrimped and saved ahead of time), Mrs. Joe secretly dreaded Pumblechook's culinary predations in her kitchen. For example, instead of eating just one roll and butter, Pumblechook would consume three or four. This meant that Mrs. Joe's portion had gone down his gullet. The sight of the empty bread basket bothered the corn chandler not a single jot, and as a consequence Mrs. Joe would resign herself to a meal of sweet potatoes with a sliver of meat instead.

Georgiana also dreaded the fall and winter months because of their darkness and lack of warmth. Sitting in front of a fire, be it in the kitchen or the forge, meant that your face was warm and your backside was freezing and there was nothing to be done about it. She was always cold due to a want of body fat and adequate clothing and shoes during those months, and the only time she was ever toasty was when she and Joe were bundled up for the night. A nice warm husband can warm you up in numerous ways and for numerous reasons, but it was still painful to try to sleep with only your nose and the top of your head above the quilts while you breathed the icy air in and out in depressing billows of frosty condensation.

Mrs. Joe had once heard people talking about Captain Cook and the South Sea islands, where it was so warm all year round that people could dispense with clothes altogether or wear blessed few of them, and where there were always plenty of palm hearts and coconuts to eat. During the coldest and hungriest moments of her adult life, she dreamed of running away to be a missionary on Tahiti or Tongatabu where she would lie in the hot sand and let the tropical sun bake away her chilblains.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

One year Joe had asked her what she wanted for her birthday. "A nice bonnet, p'raps, one with one of them big roses on the side?" he had ventured. She had shook her head and told him she wanted a cow. That was all – a cow. A perfectly ordinary English dairy cow would make her happy because it meant that she would never starve as long as it lived. She could make cheese and churn butter and cream and use the milk to enrich her humble root vegetable soups. She would feed the cow and wash it and treat it so sweetly that it wouldn't mind serving the needs of her family.

The only problem was that if flour was dear and a bonnet was dearer, a cow was beyond comprehension. The Gargerys didn't even own a horse. Joe had rubbed his side-whisker and blinked a few times, no doubt taxed at how to afford such a luxury. Unfortunately, he couldn't puzzle it out to his wife's satisfaction and she shied a serving-platter at his head, but her arm was weak and her aim poor and no harm was done.

Georgiana's dream was to improve her family's circumstances and the prospect of getting money from Miss Havisham had been intoxicating. It gave her something to dream about and hope for; she had known only poverty and cold and hunger and longed for better. But dream as hard as she would, she could not dream up the price of a cow.

xxxxxxxxxx

Now, there was a butcher in the town named Ammi Hester, who was an ill-tempered brute with an ugly face and manner. He was a bachelor who chased all the town women who entered his shop to no avail; most of them were already spoken for and the single females wanted nothing to do with him.

The only town woman who gave him the time of day was Mrs. Joe, whom he adored. When his mother had died, she had been the only person who offered him her time and condolences. Although he yearned for her touch, he knew better as he did not care to be pounded into fish paste by Joe Gargery. The fact remained that every time the bell rang above the butcher shop door, he looked up hoping to see her shabby bonnet, scowling face, and tall slender form and was sadly put out when the customer was fat, redheaded, or something else that was Not Mrs. Joe.

It was to Ammi Hester that Mrs. Joe had turned to seek out her cow. She had come in one morning early, before there was much of a trade and before the other shops along the main street had opened for the day.

"Ammi," she had announced. "You wouldn't have such a thing as a cow for sale, now?"

He had been taken aback. He had expected her to ask him for a rolled roast, or a rasher of bacon, or perhaps a leg of lamb if it was needed for a special occasion. Deep in his heart, he had wished she had asked him to run off with her to America as she had decided Joe was only half the man he was.

Hester the Butcher blinked. "Why no, missus," he stammered. "But sit yourself down and let me look into them lovely dark eyes and we can talk about it."

Georgiana plunked down, her basket held in her lap as a barrier in case Hester decided to go for her. "My heart yearns for a cow, but we can't afford one. Perhaps bein' in the meat trade you know of a knacker or a farmer who has an old one. I an't got much ready money but Joe can offer his smithin' for a length of time and I can bake pies until my fingers ache. I need a cow, Ammi. What do you think of it?"

The butcher responded that he thought well of it, that he had several people he could ask, and that if she were his he would make love to her all night and gaze into her beautiful face all day.

She looked at him sternly. "Then we'd both starve to death, Ammi. I won't pass that comment onto Joe as I reckon you want to keep your teeth. However, I would be most grateful for anything you can do for us and I will make you a fine meat pie out o' your scraps every week for a month just for making inquiries." She stood.

He stood and extended his arms to embrace her. She backed up a step. "Bother the pies! Smother me with kisses instead!"

Suddenly, the bell over the butcher shop door rang merrily and Lavinia Carmody from downstreet hobbled in.

"Thank the Lord God and all his angels," Georgiana breathed, and gave the old lady's shoulder a grateful pat as she quickly left the establishment.

xxxxxxxxxx

Ammi Hester had little to occupy his time when he wasn't cutting into a haunch of beef or stuffing a sausage casing. Consequently, he spent all day thinking about Mrs. Joe's request and immediately sprang into action as soon as the shop was closed for the day. He made his way to the farm of one of his cronies, one Tristan Pierce, who owned a dairy herd and wasn't too scrupulous about their care and feeding.

"Pierce, I got this town lady for which I got feelins who wants a dairy cow. A real beauty for which I would do anythink."

Tristan's shaggy eyebrows rose. "Who is this paragon, then?" he quipped.

"Blacksmith's wife," the butcher replied reverently.

"She's a shrew," his friend replied. "and more scarecrow than beauty, not to put too fine a point on it. From one friend to another, you need to let her alone. "

"Mebbe but by God I would do anythin for her. Stood by me when I wus cryin after my ma passed on. Said she knew Death like an old acquaintance and told me how to ride it out."

Tristan Pierce shrugged his shoulders. "Why don't the blacksmith buy her one? No, hold a bit," the man continued, a grin on his face. "he musta spent all his ready money on dishes an such considerin she's always shying them at his head. Me, I'd backhand a woman like that in a heartbeat if she throwed anythin at me. Or pitch her down a well. Heh, heh, heh."

The butcher eyed his friend with indignation and disapproval. "If she thinks she needs to toss crockery then I surmise she has her reasons," he admonished. "Can ye sell me a cow, Pierce?"

The up and down of it after a considerable amount of haggling was that he sold the butcher a rather nice dairy cow for a price equivalent to two weeks' earnings from his butcher shop. Hester didn't mind in the least because it had been Mrs. Joe who had convinced him not to do away with himself in grief after his sainted mother's passing.

"If it weren't fer that blessed woman, I would ha' been dead and gone," is how he had put it to Tristan Pierce at the time.

xxxxxxxxxx

Ammi Hester brought the cow to the forge the following Sunday afternoon, telling first Pip and then his sister that the animal was theirs free and clear. Delighted, Pip commenced to pet the animal and offer suggestions for her name. Mrs. Joe, on the other hand, had run into the kitchen and flung herself into her kitchen chair with her face in her hands and had burst into tears.

Joe had been upstairs changing from his church clothes when he heard the commotion and looked out the window and saw the butcher. He ran downstairs to confront the visitor whom he suspected was guilty of some sort of obscene insult to his wife. As he strode past his wife at the table, Mrs. Joe reached up, grabbed the front of his shirt, and pulled him down into the chair next to her with a thud.

"Has he come 'ere lookin for a brokken head, then?" the blacksmith cried.

"Joe Gargery," she shouted, "Sometimes you haven't got the sense the Almighty gave a goose! I asked Ammi Hester if he could find me a cow for my milk and cheese, and he did! He wanted no money for her! Did you see the beauty of her? Oh Lor! I can't believe my eyes!" She recommenced her crying jag.

Joe blinked several times and wrapped his arms around her, as he knew the diphtheria had weakened her heart and such fits of weeping could harm her (so could her rampages, but they hadn't killed her so far). As he rubbed her back, he ruminated about the fact that this stranger to the family had just given them a very expensive gift, and let his imagination crawl over his possible motives in doing so. He frowned, his suspicions aroused and his outlook darkened.

Georgiana looked up at him, her black eyes snapping. "Don't you say nothin bad to him you great ninny!" she cried. "I ast you first for a cow and you did nothin to aid me! Lay a hand on him and I'll do the same to you!" More sobbing.

Joe Gargery stood and sighed deeply. "If this feller has injured yer honor in whatsoever manner, large or small, he's injured my honor," he said, "and be it so or be it so'nt, injuries to honor must be addressed." His wife's eyes were huge as she watched him stride outside, where he gave the cow only a cursory glance. He told Pip to go inside to mind his sister as he hadn't liked the timbre of her breathing. Then, he turned his darkened gaze upon the hapless butcher.

"It a'nt that I don't appreciate the cow, Hester, but what the deuce do you mean by makin a gift of 'er? You been eyein my Georgie for some time and givin her extra sausages and cracklins and the odd strip o' bacon when she visits yer establishment. I an't no fool even though she occasionally calls me sech. A man don't giv a woman livestock unless he be courtin her, and Mrs. Joe's been spoken for for donkey's years. My years, to be more partickuler. So, once again. Giv' it mouth. What do you mean by it?"

Hester looked at the man and realized that this could go badly. He squared his shoulders and looked the blacksmith squarely in the eyes.

"In a fight we might be equals, bein' as I heft meat and you heft iron," the butcher said. "But I got no intentions of engaging in fisticuffs with you, Gargery. I an't laid a finger on your wife and wouldn't think a' doin so. Truth be told, I think she'd knock me clear to London herself if I tried sech."

Joe nodded while feeling his side-whisker, resisting the urge to amend the butcher's statement from London to Dublin out of family loyalty.

"But know this," the butcher continued gravely. "You an't the only man in the world what loves her with all his hart, and that's a fact. And it's nothin' but the truth so help me God and if providing her with this cow brings her happiness, I am happy to do it. If I could afford to, I'd bring her a thousand cows."

Joe sighed, and looked at his boots. "I got no quarrel with you over your feelins, so long as they stay feelins. Don't surprise me none that you have 'em for her; she's a buster but she's also the most a-stonishing woman I ever knowed. Now, as to that fine cow. We owe you for it. Now, Hester, what will you take?"

"One fine apple pie, with sugar crystals on the top of it. That is my price. If she makes cheese, she can bring me a half-round if she's so inclined. But only if she's coming my way for a piece o' beef or pork or poultry. Done and done?"

Joe held out his large hand, and they shook on it.

xxxxxxxxxxx

Later that afternoon and every day thereafter until she was struck down, Mrs. Joe lovingly washed and brushed the cow, whom she and Pip jointly named Apple Blossom. She made Hester a whole series of wondrous apple and meat pies, a different one per week, with Joe's blessing. She never got around to making cheese because Dolge Orlick decided to stove her head in and smash her spine instead.

On the day after the attack, both Joe and Pip would never forget the butcher's unexpected visit to the forge, where he became so hysterical with grief and loss at the cruelty toward Mrs. Joe that he collapsed and had to be helped to the Three Jolly Bargemen for a good drunk.

They also would never forget the pitiful lowing of Apple Blossom, who stood in the yard that day unmilked, unfed, and neglected by her beloved mistress.


End file.
